Talk:Ahmed Omar Abu Ali

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Wikipedia is for objective articles, not opinion essays. This page should be deleted or completely reconstrcuted.

I agree. I've added the NPOV template to the page and took a brief stab at cleaning up the first couple sentences of the article. It may be more appropriate though to suggest that this article be completely rewritten. --Btmiller 01:39, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this article should be deleted though, as Ahmed Ali's case is of significant enough general interest to be included here, IMO. --Btmiller 01:40, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

And you have a problem with simple facts?????? He is on trial, suspected of being an AQ terrorist, is he not????

So what if he's a suspected terrorist? Does every suspect get a page on wikipedia?

Why doesn't Timothy Mcveigh get a page??

I don't know why Timothy Mcveigh doesn't have a page, but Timothy McVeigh, the bomber, does have a very large and active page.

This talk page is not being used properly gang. Everyone who puts a comment here is supposed to sign it, by appending four tilde characters, like this... ~~~~ Signing puts a date stamp.

You are supposed to prefix each paragraph you type in reply with one or more colon characters. Each colon indents your paragraph. Your followup should be indented one more level than what you are replying to... It makes it easier to tell who wrote what.

Btmiller, you didn't say why you put a {NPOV} tag. How can anyone tell whether a consensus has been acheived, and the tag can be removed, when you didn't specifically say why you put it there? -- Geo Swan 14:58, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the oversight, I put the NPOV tag there since the prior version of the article was clearly biased in favor of Mr. Abu Ali's innocence against the government case. As the article has been reduced to a recitation of the facts of the case, I think that the issue is resolved. If anybody feels that this is in error, feel free to revert my edit removing the tag. Btmiller 10:17, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Very soon, you'll have to edit this page when he's acquitted...when the truth comes out and the lies are exposed!!!!

[edit] Relevance & Article Clean-up

I saw discussion above in relation to the relevance of this persons case, casting him off as merely a 'terror suspect', or as the case may be, a 'terrorist' per the American court in which he was tried. Allow me to touch on the relevance of this article, which seems to not be addressed even slightly.

The ratio decidendi of this case was based on one primary source of evidence, from the little I have read so far in the matter it appears that if the confession video were removed from the evidence put forth in the case, the ratio would have been overturned and he would most likely been found innocent as guilt cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt. If this was a common law court and not a criminal court matter, where one only has to prove reasonable probability, then the ratio decidendi put forth may be in some way legitimate.

We have the following facts; the video is the primary source of evidence short of third party post-actus documentation (cia / intel reports), there was no prima facie case against the individual, there were allegations that the video confession was made whilst the defendant was placed under duress or coerced for evidence through alleged torture and finally the defendant had recanted his confession (I am unsure whether he did, but the act of placing allegations of torture would, to a reasonable judge, indicate that recantation was a definite.).

The fact this case was a whirlwind 3 day trial (when you consider that almost every criminal trial takes in excess of a year) it makes me ponder under what jurisdiction and in what court was this matter tried?

I will gladly attempt to fix up this article as I truly feel that it illustrates a great misjustice and a totally inappropriate knee jerk reaction / judgement on behalf of the court involved. If the video is taken out the coin would have landed on the flipside, therefore if a case is only as strong as one piece of evidence the case is questionable at best.

Perhaps someone can fill in the blanks on the following questions for me?

• What jurisdiction was this man arrested in? (Was he in the US? The interrogation was carried out in Saudi Arabia, was he flown there from the US? If so, why?)
• Did this man have a bail hearing? If so, in what court/country/jurisdiction?
• If not, was there a presumption against bail? What substantiating reasons were given for the presumption?
• What court was he tried in (Or part of the judicial heirarchy, to me it sounds like a court martial and not a civil court; further who was the magistrate / judge in the trial?)
• What other pressing evidence was presented? (Does anyone have a fact-sheet from the case, or a reference I can look at to see the case files and perhaps a transcript?)

Those are the tip of the ice berg, but if someone is willing to take a leap of faith and play devils advocate with me in this matter, it'd be interesting from a legal point of view to illustrate just how malicious and unjust such cases which are becoming more and more common, Australian citizens are being charged under the new 'terrorism' laws because they allow for much more leeway for police to detain / interrogate people, all based on 'suspicion', and I'm talking your average citizen here, if there was a social, racial or religious stereotyping going on (as wrong as that is) you could possibly understand the narrow minded nature of the arresting agent/officer, but we're talking the 'average aussie' being treated like Osama until proven innocent, I personally have had dealings with being arrested under that act but released four days later without charge and I'm a non-threatening looking 'caucasian' 'christian'.

I can't stress enough the importance of this case as it sets a precedence that someone can be convicted in an American court based on one single confession allegedly taken under duress and then recanted. You can tear up your acts and legislation on civil liberties now; they no longer exist as long as this decision by the court is held based on the facts I have read so far. So please, prove me wrong, frankly this whole matter disturbs me greatly. Jachin 04:37, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Ack, just realised some of the questions above are moot and already answered, ignore that; I blame cold and flu medication. Regardless, links, transcripts, info -please-. Jachin 04:42, 30 March 2006 (UTC)